Readers will recall my previous post on the Italian municipal elections. Ora sono tornato a casa, so I was waiting for news, and scant minutes ago Ms Mew rang me up with a line or two of Avanti Popolo. Giuliano Pisapia has taken Milan, Premier Silvio Berlusconi’s personal bastion, with a vote of 55.1%.

The party is going strong in the piazza Duomo as I write this (see the photo above). Judging by the dominant colour, one might think it could have been a party closer to home, say on May 2, with the NDP celebrating its own historic victory. Bandiera arancia, then. The politics aren’t all that far off.

Berlusconi had staked a good deal of his reputation on this fight. And he has been bearded in his den. “Ora i milanesi devono pregare il buon Dio che non gli succeda qualcosa di negativo” (Now the Milanese must pray to the good Lord that nothing bad happens), he groused.

Pisapia expressed some unhappiness today with the tone of his opposition’s campaign—references to Milan becoming a “Gypsy city,” and the false accusation that he had stolen a car three decades ago. The other day TV political host Gad Lerner, taken aback by Berlusconi’s incendiary fear-mongering, asked a spokeswoman point-blank: “Do they think we’re stupid?”

If so, the Berlusconi camp is sadder and perhaps wiser today.

“We have liberated Milan,” said the new mayor. “Now we must re-build it.” As noted here, he has five years to do so. One hopes that Berlusconi, and the Lega Nord thugs who have squatted in Milan for far too long, are by then a distant memory.